Category Archives: America

How Did The US Become 'A Proto-Soviet Surveillance State?'

America, Communism, Socialism, The Military, The State, War

Fred Reed demands to know “What Have the Bastards Done to My Country?”:

“This is the country that produced Peggy Lee and Tampa Red and the ‘fitty-sedden Chevy, the country that spits techno-whizz golf carts onto Mars just like it was even possible, that brought the hamburger to gorgeous bejuiced perfection and invented most of the modern world. It’s the home of sand-lot baseball and Little Peggy March and BB guns and Tasty Freeze. It is, in a phrase, one fine place.”

“How did it sink to being a proto-Soviet surveillance state that builds vast awful Visitor Centers in the style of a Hitlerian mauseoleum [sic]? You can’t go to the john without a photo ID anymore. Something ain’t right.”

Reeds’ “Thoughts in an Insurrectionist Vein” are “here.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Racist

America, Barack Obama, Elections 2008, Israel, Media, Racism

As the media told it, not voting Obama was tantamount to racism. By the same (twisted) logic, not voting for McCain ought to have been considered reverse racism. By this calculus, black and Hispanic racism far exceeded Anglo-American alleged racism. Fifty five percent of Anglo-Americans voted McCain, while 95 percent of African-Americans and 67 percent of Latinos voted Obama!

Happy Birthday, Pat Buchanan

America, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, History, IMMIGRATION

Tom Piatak writes a great column about a great American (with whom I’ve disagreed, a fact that has nothing to do with the man’s prescience and patriotism): “Pat Buchanan At 70: ‘He Told You So, You F****ing Fools!’” Read it on VDARE.COM, naturally:

“Both Bush and McCain swallowed the neoconservative line whole. Both see the mission of the United States as using its blood and treasure to spread’ ‘global democratic capitalism.’ Both welcome the mass immigration that is radically transforming the United States. … neither views America as a real country at all, but as the embodiment of an abstract political creed—the ‘first universal nation.’

Buchanan long ago warned that allowing neoconservatives to set the agenda would be calamitous for conservatives. His warning was unmistakably vindicated when the Republicans lost Congress in 2006. And if the American electorate rejects Bush and McCain next Tuesday, it will be rejecting neoconservatism, pure and simple.

Of course, Buchanan opposed the Iraq War that has cast its shadow over Bush’s presidency. He foresaw that removing Saddam Hussein would greatly strengthen Tehran and that an occupation of Iraq would be both costly and deadly.

More generally, Buchanan recognized that the end of the Cold War meant that America must begin reexamining its global commitments and pursuing a foreign policy in line with the one recommended by the Founders—and that failure to do so would be costly.”

The complete column on VDARE.COM.

Liquidity Lunacy

America, Debt, Economy, Europe, Inflation

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

“The world’s major central banks banded together Thursday to flood global money markets with massive amounts of U.S. dollars, in hopes of taming a major source of the tensions rocking the financial system.
[Global Power Boost chart]

In a concerted move, the U.S. Federal Reserve said it will expand or introduce measures to shuttle dollars to major European central banks, the Bank of Canada and the Bank of Japan, so that those banks can provide short-term dollar funding to commercial banks. Officials in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and other markets also pledged to inject more money into their financial systems.

The central banks’ moves came in the wake of a meltdown in global financial markets as short-term funding markets seized up and investors piled into U.S. Treasury bills in an unprecedented rush to safety. Concerns about redemptions in the $3.6 trillion money-market industry — a key provider of liquidity to short-term funding markets — and rising strains in the banking system had sent short-term funding rates sharply higher Wednesday. …

The U.S. Fed boosted its U.S. dollar swap line with foreign central banks by $180 billion. (The swap line is an arrangement through which foreign central banks can get U.S. dollars from the Fed.)”

[Snip]

I’m no economist, but as a devotee of Austrian economics, I can’t see how more credit is helpful when the proper correction ought to involve a continued contraction of the hitherto orgiastic lending exuberance.